


i needed to lose you to find me

by cherryraes



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Beverly Marsh & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Beverly Marsh is a Good Friend, Beverly Marsh learning to love herself, Eddie Kaspbrak & Beverly Marsh Are Best Friends, IT 1990 - Freeform, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, Movie: IT (2017), Other, Post-Canon Fix-It, Reddie (background), Sad with a Happy Ending, Self-Discovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Stanley Uris loves his friends no matter where he is, beverly marsh deserves the world, this is essentially just beverly loving herself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-31 19:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21250052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryraes/pseuds/cherryraes
Summary: she thinks it happened sometime after college, when the world became even more difficult than it had been before. when the vibrant, beautiful girl started to dim. maybe between longing for something, for people you could never really remember, and chasing feelings that never last.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Audra Phillips, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	i needed to lose you to find me

**Author's Note:**

> so i wrote this to the song ‘lose you to love me’ by selena gomez. this song is something i hold so deeply to my heart because i can relate so hard to being a relationship that is toxic, manipulative and so, so draining. i think that bev could too. i wanted to write this bc i think that beverly marsh is an outstanding character that deserves so much more than she ever got out of life.

** _“you promised the world and i fell for it—_ **

** _i put you first and you adored it_ **

** _set fire to my forest_ **

** _and you let it burn _ **

** _sang off key in my chorus_ **

** _cause it wasn’t yours_ **

from the time she was little, beverly marsh had become quite the expert at loss.

she lost her mom young, to an illness that had overtaken her entire body. she lost her father, because although he was very much alive throughout her younger years, when her mom died, it carried him further and further from the vision of him that she had idolized and closer to the heinous man he really was.

she lost her innocence, to an unforgiving, cruel town that hurled insults and wet trash at her for simply existing in a way that was unapologetically her. she had lost her dignity more times than she’d like to recount, picking up broken glass off the floor or covering bruises with makeup in her extravagant en-suite bathroom. she found her best friends, the best friends that she is convinced ever walked this planet, when she was 13, only to lose them again when she moved away. she lost her memory, filled with auburn hair and shared traumas and cigarette butts and the word  loser,  which had always felt more like a compliment than a weapon against her.

but no one, not anyone ever told her how to deal with losing herself.

she thinks it happened sometime after college, when the world became even more difficult than it had been before. when the vibrant, beautiful girl started to dim. maybe between longing for something, for  people  you could never really remember, and chasing feelings that never last. but more often than not, she thinks it happened when she met tom.

beverly marsh had never been weak. she never let her opinion go unnoticed, never let assholes speak over her and berate her. she never let people get picked on and never let people provoke her without snapping back just as hard. tom though, tom reflected the one person that could bring her down with a single syllable. the person she had clung to and wished and hoped and prayed would protect her.  her father.

tom found bev at twenty-five working as waitress in an unrelenting economy that never let her catch a break. she was still reeling from college debt, doing little design gigs for the flamboyant and loving group of people she’d managed to find over the years. she was lost and uncertain in her aspirations; she was stuck.

tom was a handsome man with a smooth tongue and deep pockets that felt so much like moving forward. bev was a lost girl with big hopes and dreams and heart that wasn’t quite whole. she had yearned to feel loved the way she observed before her nearly everyday. bev has always been strong, independent and fierce, but deep down? like everyone else in the world, deep down, beverly marsh wanted to feel soft and warm and protected. and tom made it seem like he could give her that.

he praised her wildly in the midst of mindless chatter at bars, pined for her tirelessly over the counters of the diner on seventh that she worked at, whispered her sweet nothings in the dark at nightclubs where their bodies never really felt close enough. tom took her to fancy restaurants and bought her nice things and bragged endlessly to his friends and coworkers about her. he held her hand on days were she couldn’t tame the monster that was her mind and gave her space when she needed it. he laughed at her jokes and complimented her smile, making sure bev always knew that he adored her smile more than anything in the world. tom had promised— and given, up until the that point—bev the world and so much more, and after a few months of fighting with the walls she had in place, she was ready to be in that perfect world with tom.

and god, perfect it was. for a long time, a year maybe. tom was good and sweet and so loving. his touches made her heart thrum and his words made her head so clouded with love that she didn’t think she ever really had a fighting chance. this was her time. finally, she would be whole again.

_ **....i saw the signs and i ignored it  
rose-colored glasses all distorted** _

_ **set fire to my purpose** _

_ **and i let it burn** _

_ **you got off on the hurtin'** _

_ **whenit wasn't yours, yeah....** _

but then something changed. three months after she moved in with him, a very stupid mistake on her part, something shifted. the ground beneath them cracked and instead of the perfect world that tom spent all that time building for her, she was met with unabashed anger and vicious eyes. warm touches turned scorching, in the worst possible way. the praises turned to unrelenting criticism, cutting her deeply in the way that only one person before had managed to do.

** _...we’d always go into it blindly_ **

** _i needed to lose you to find me_ **

** _this dancing was killing me softly_ **

** _i needed to hate you to love me, yeah..._ **

the changes were never subtle, either. when they were out with friends, tom stopped smiling at bev like she was something to be proud of. he stopped holding her hand on days where she wept and stopped giving her space when she asked. by then, tom had resorted to humming boredly or pressing his lips together in an irritated line when she spoke. her jokes stopped being funny and became attention seeking. her smile went from the most beautiful thing in the world to something that would earning a harsh smack in the face if it lingered linger than what tom had thought was appropriate. all the things bev was sure was good about herself started to become all the things tom hated, which in turn made bev hate them too.

** _....to love, yeah_ **

** _i needed to lose you to love me...._ **

her dreams started to fade too. gone were all the late nights she stayed up designing clothes through college. thrown away we’re all the sketches she’d poured her heart and soul in. it was tom’s dreams now. tom’s plan. and his plan included bev working with him, well  for  him at a company that she never had really given a fuck about. she had to learn all the ins and outs because  tom said so—  and as she learned with every bruise and scratch she’d acquired by then,  what tom says, goes.

by the time two years had passed, she was a complete shell of the person she’d used to be. she was still bev in all the ways that made her bev— the gentle yet all-knowing eyes, the full lips with firm confidence that helped her walk a little taller, an exceedingly wonderful personality that could make even the most unloved feel at home— but she had stopped being bev in the ways that she loved the most. those lips were no longer cherry red but a dull nude. those eyes were now shattered and afraid, unsteady in the face of any contact. her confidence had seemingly disappeared. instead of the brash, outspoken, confident girl she had been, she was then small. small, terrified and irreversibly damaged. 

and beverly marsh never said a word.

** _....i gave my all and they all know it_ **

** _then you tore me down and now it's showing_ **

** _in two months, you replaced us_ **

** _like it was easy_ **

** _made me think I deserved it_ **

** _in the thick of healing, yeah...._ **

she never enlisted the help of others. never gave too much detail when people asked her what happened to her design dreams. never did more than give a small, reassuring smile that she was “fine, just tired.” when people questioned the dark circles under her eyes. she never let anyone get close enough to find out what was going on.

and at that point, bev knew she was gone. she went from being the girl who helped everyone to the girl that couldn’t even help herself. she  hated  herself. she hated that she let someone destroy her in a way she wasn’t sure could ever be undone. she hated herself for forgetting all the things she loved about herself. she hated herself for letting tom put out her fire.

_ **.....we’d always go into it blindly** _

_ **i needed to lose you to find me** _

_ **this dancing was killing me softly** _

_ **i needed to hate you to love me, yeah...** _

nearly fifteen years of hell; of learning to only speak when spoken to, of shrinking so far into yourself you can’t recognize anything good anymore, of believing that this was all that she was destined for, that this was all that she would ever deserve, something amazing happened.

mike hanlon called. 

suddenly, a summers worth of the most amazing memories she had ever made were slamming into her full force, even if the dread of going back and fighting IT weren’t too far behind. it didn’t matter because suddenly beverly marsh felt like she  could finally breathe again.

so she packed her shit, all the shit that mattered anyway,as fast as she could, trying not to wake the monster in her bed. and yeah, that didn’t work and yeah, it ended with more pain and more violence, but it  ended.  it ended with her stupid wedding band on one of the short, stupid concrete posts in front of her stupidly big house. it ended with her walking down the street, rain falling around her and a sting in her cheek that felt too raw, but a feeling in her heart that was blossoming beautifully. it ended with beverly marsh walking towards something. no, it ended with beverly marsh going home.

_ **...to love, love, yeah** _

_ **to love, love, yeah** _

_ **to love, yeah....** _

and after so long, bev wasn’t sure what home even looked like. she wasn’t sure what her friends had became, or what she would be going back to see. but it didn’t matter— it never would when it came to the losers.

now? god  _everything _mattered.

** _...i needed to lose you to love me, yeah..._ **

they had finished it. they had rid this stupid fucking town of that stupid fucking demon, let go of all the parts of that stupid fucking town that broke them as kids, and held on tighter to all the things and moments that made Derry home.

she was  real  and  here  and  okay. 

that day that they finished it, that day they’d, or really just richie, narrowly managed to save eddie from a claw that would have taken the groups number down to five. they swam in dirty quarry water and made peace with unresolved feelings and sat on realizations that sometimes the best thing in the world is sitting right in front of you.

_ **.... to love, love, yeah** _

_ **to love, love, yeah** _

_ **to love, yeah** _

_ **i needed to lose you to love me...** _

and god, how it was. benjamin hanscom. the boy with the soft brown eyes and the big heart and love of everything soft. looking at ben felt like breathing in fresh air for the first time. talking to ben felt like falling in love with all the little things in life. reaching for ben felt like reaching for beverly all at once, because he never once put out her fire.

and everything fit into place. the poem being by him. the way she always felt a lingering stare, one that was kinder and gentler than any other. she had always assumed that it’d been bill. but now she doesn’t know how she could have ever gotten it wrong.

** _...you promised the world and I fell for it_ **

** _i put you first and you adored it_ **

** _set fires to my forest_ **

** _and you let it burn_ **

** _sang off-key in my chorus..._ **

being with ben was so much different than being with tom. being with ben felt like progress. the way he never pushed too far, too fast. being with ben felt like laughter when nothing was funny. a bubbling need to release everything in the healthiest of ways. being with ben felt like patience, when ben never stopped giving beverly the space she needed and never stopped holding her hand when her trauma reared it’s ugly head. being with ben felt like getting something back that you’d lost— something you spent your whole life missing and never knew why. being with ben meant  living life,  and that was something bev needed to do more than anything. 

and most importantly, after a while, living life meant beverly finally feeling like beverly again.

** _....to love, love, yeah_ **

** _to love, love, yeah_ **

** _to love, yeah_ **

** **

** _i needed to hate you to love me...._ **

because for a while, bev spent some time with herself. she got her divorce finalized (it was hell and back, about fifty times over) and moving away for six months, working on herself in the ways only she truly knew she needed. 

bev left once more to re-find all the things that ever made her beverly. she started wearing what she wanted again. she learned to allow herself to smile. she switched out the dull nude for the vibrant red she always adored. she started designing again. 

she had bad days, days were she woke up screaming and sweating and flinching at every noise that her ears picked up. she had anxious days, where she feared tom would show up, brow belt in hand, ready to drag her back to the life he forced upon her. but there were good days, too. days where bev let the sun soak into her skin and let her hair float around her in the breeze. days where richie called and made her laugh until her lungs nearly gave out. days where ben sent her short, sweet texts about how proud of her he was, and how he would wait for her no matter how long it took. days where she could look in the mirror and start to see herself instead of the men that made her shrink.

_ **.....to love, love, yeah** _

_ **to love, love, yeah** _

_ **to love, yeah** _

_ **i needed to lose you to love me....** _

and soon enough, beverly marsh was back.

and no, it wasn’t easy. no, six months wasn’t enough to erase the damage decades had worn into her skin. beverly knew she would be dealing with this for the rest of her life. she knew that her and ben had to go slow, and had to be patient. she knew that she had so much farther to go. but she was  _excited_ and  _ready_ and  _healing_. 

“you know, stan the man,” bev pauses, running her hand above the blades of grass next to her. “it’s been a rough thirty years. full of the most terrifying, horrible, and confusing things i still sometimes can’t wrap my head around,”

** _....to love, love, yeah_ **

** _to love, love, yeah_ **

** _to love, yeah...._ **

beverly smiles softly, imagining stan looking at her with those eyes she now remembers clear as day. she knows he’d have sat with her, legs folded and curls lively, listening to her every word intently.

“and we’re all pretty fucked up people. all of us, in the ways we could only ever really explain to each other. it’s comforting almost. like on days where i can’t get tom out of my mind. those days i’ll call eddie, who is almost always right next to richie—yeah i know,  finally,  right?— and he’ll tell me how his hands still itch for an inhaler he never really needed or his throat can still feel the ghost of the pills he’d gotten used to taking every day and i feel so light. or i’ll call mike and tell him about all of my regrets and he’ll tell me about how every single choice i’ve ever made has lead me right to this moment, where i’m supposed to be, and my chest will unwind in this funny little way that only comes from true comfort.”

she isn’t sure when she started crying, but she is. the tears are cold as they roll down her cheek, them catching the wind and icing her skin. she runs her pale fingers over the letter on the stone in front of her and presses down a little, hoping that wherever he is, stan can feel the touch.

“for so long, stan, i really believed that was it. that the life i had with my dad and then with tom was all that i was worth. i thought that i would never be able to lay in a bed with someone’s and really feel their love. but ben— he’s different. but you know that. he’s so beautiful in the ways i could never have dreamed of. he is so reassuring and helpful and gentle that sometimes i think the brashness of beverly marsh will ruin him,” a tear stained laugh echoes in the space around her. “but i know it won’t. i have spent so much time with myself lately. so much time relearning all the things i undid because of the things i’ve been told. ben makes me better, but not only that, he helps me  want  to be better on days where all i want to do is give up.”

** _...and now the chapter is closed and done_ **

** _to love, love, yeah_ **

** _to love, love, yeah_ **

** _to love, yeah...._ **

beverly is standing now, unclasping the small pin she brought with her from where it rests on her dress. she places the small hummingbird pin next to the small picture of thirteen year old stanley that she just  knows  richie left, but not before kissing it softly.

“i hope somewhere, wherever you are, stan, that you’re happy. i hope that your life was everything it ever could have been. i hope that you know how much we miss you, how much we love you.” the sun seems to shine a little harder in the spot where she stands, so nods once, breathtaking smile on her dark lips. “thank you for being here for me while i found myself again. you always were the best one to talk to.”

** _....and now it's goodbye, it's goodbye for us._ **

and for the second time since everything went wrong, beverly feels herself walking towards something rather than running away from it. she feels the wind, soft, delicate and everywhere all at once, in her hair and the ground, hard, stabilizing and supportive, under her feet. she feels the six pieces of her heart that she lost long ago, click fully back into place.

on this day, while beverly marsh is walking towards the rest of her life, she felt the seventh and most precious piece burn inside of her, brighter and livelier than ever before.

on this day, beverly marsh starts to become quite the expert at loving herself.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think!!! my tumblr is @cherrysreddie and my twitter is @sloppytoziers :)


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